3 Fox Farm Preview Beers

Today is May 31, 2016. Fox Farm Brewery does not yet exist. Zack Adams’ project is merely a nearly empty former dairy barn in Salem. I won’t project when Fox Farm will become a fully licensed operational brewery, but it most likely won’t be in 2016.

But of the fifty billion breweries-to-be, Fox Farm is definitely in the top-tier of those I care about. So much so, that I’m “reviewing” three of their beers perhaps more than a year before everyone can enjoy them. I’ve done this before with one brewery-to-be: Lasting Brass in Watertown. And if you know me, you know I love Lasting Brass. Which, by the transitive property, means that I love Fox Farm.

And I’ve never even met Zack Adams.

But I’ve drunk three of his beers. So here we are.

Freckled Field Tart Farmhouse
One big, shared bottle, 5% ABV

“From the soils come the spoils.”

And with that, a new brewery is being birthed in Salem, CT. According to my six-second Google search, this catchphrase has never yet been used. So hats off to Zack and his Fox Farm Brewery for being the first – and perhaps, if he has taken the proper legal steps, the last – business to use it.

In this day and age of all things “local” and “organic” and “Farm to table” and blah, blah, I’mSoTiredOfItAll blah, it’s always cool when a business sticks to what it says it is. I believe Fox Farm will do that as much as possible. After all, when it comes to making “farmhouse” or “wild” ales, capturing and utilizing the wild yeasts that grow “in the fields” is pretty much how the whole thing works.

And when it works well (see: Kent Falls and OEC, locally), it works beautifully.

Now we can add Fox Farm to that list… or at least we can when they open. I hope.

After all, the three beers on this page were samplers given to a friend of mine for free. Production beers, due to scaling and time constraints and all that stuff, might not be as perfect. Who knows. But at least brewer/owner Zack Adams’ pedigree is as solid as anyone else’s trying to open breweries in 2016-17. So I’ll stand by my prediction: Fox Farm is going to be pretty great.

The Freckled Field Tart Farmhouse ale was delicious. It’s their everyday farmhouse ale fermented with a combination of saison yeast and a blend of cultured brettanomyces strains. Zack’s been working at it for years and I can’t imagine the final, official, production blend will be discernably different. As with anyone moving to production, Fox Farm is trying to speed up the whole process for their house sour base beer.

The Freckled Field was sharp and lemony tart but bright and clean as well. The sour/tart quality was perfectly balanced with a sort of nuanced citrus sweetness. I assume that the Freckled Field will be continuously brewed to be used in not only a hypothetical barreling program, but also as a sort of jumping off point for more creative sours with all sorts of kooky additions.

I Googled “freckled field” and this came up. I won’t complain.

The Freckled Fields name is a nod to the stones that dot the landscapes in Salem and beyond.

Regarding that Fox Farm previously mentioned catchphrase, here’s something mildly interesting: In Archaeology, spoil is the term used for the soil, dirt and rubble that results from an excavation, and discarded off site on spoil heaps.

In other words, yes, from the soils come the spoil… and the spoils.

Overall Rating: ARating vs. Similar style: A+

Music Vale Series

Consonance & Dissonance: Muscat
One medium, shared bottle, ?% ABV

I love beer series. I love their structure.

And I love cleverly named beer series. There’s a LOT going on here with this one. Yes, I recognize that I’m the only person other than perhaps Zack at Fox Farm that thinks about this stuff, but you’re the one reading this. So here goes.

In the mid-19th century, Orramel Whittlesey founded a music conservatory in Salem. The conservatory served as a boarding school attended primarily by young women who came from all over the country. First known as Mr. Whittlesey’s School, then the Salem Normal Academy of Music, and finally the Music Vale Seminary and Normal Academy of Music, the school is often credited with being the first music conservatory in the United States.

Rad. (I also love when my beer pages bleed over into that which CTMQ was originally intended.)

So now we have “Music Vale” and America’s oldest music conservatory historically located on the same road as Fox Farm Brewery. Cool.

These are Muscat grapes

And Zack takes that fact and uses it in the name of his beer series, Consonance and Dissonance. (It’s a music term.)

Consonance and dissonance form a structural dichotomy in which the terms define each other by mutual exclusion: a consonance is what is not dissonant, and reciprocally. However, a finer consideration shows that the distinction forms a gradation, from the most consonant to the most dissonant. Consonance and dissonance define a level of sweetness / harshness, pleasantness / unpleasantness, acceptability / unacceptability, of the sounds or intervals under consideration. As [some guy none of us have ever heard of] stressed, “The two concepts have never been completely explained, and for a thousand years the definitions have varied”

Again, rad.

This is Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Now let me rephrase that paragraph to suit our needs.

Consonance and dissonance form a structural dichotomy in which the terms define each other by mutual exclusion: a consonance is what is not dissonant, and reciprocally. However, a finer consideration shows that the distinction forms a gradation, from the most consonant to the most dissonant. Consonance and dissonance define a level of sweetness / harshness, pleasantness / unpleasantness, acceptability / unacceptability, of the tastes under consideration. As Steve Wood stressed, “The two concepts have never been completely explained, and for a few hundred years the definitions have varied”

See what we (me and Zack, independently) did there?

This is a muskrat.

These are sour, wild beers. They are not for everyone. Not only that, this particular variant is a wild ale aged on local Muscat grapes. There are consonant notes and dissonant notes in it. I read somewhere that Zack has access to a nearby vineyard. It might be his or his family’s or a friend’s or something. I don’t know. All I know is he has access to wine grapes and presumably wine barrels.

And all that matters for us is that he can make some creative wild ales.

This was my first “Muscat aged” wild ale. The carb was soft and lovely. The dissonant tart quality melded wonderfully with the consonant grapiness. Holy crap, this beer is from a brewery that doesn’t yet exist?

This is a muskox.

Honestly, in a couple years, sour/wild beer fans won’t have to leave the state to get the best of the style. A full day’s trip from Salem to Watertown to Oxford to Kent will stock one’s beer cellar with enough funky perfection to last for years.

Trust me.

Overall Rating: ARating vs. Similar style: A+

Consonance & Dissonance: St. Croix
One medium, shared bottle, ?% ABV

I’ll spare your eyes and just start with the kicker: This beer is perfect. Just look at this beaut. Once again, Fox Farm knows what they’re doing with the whole living beer thing. My word.

I’m just incredibly lucky and appreciative to have had the opportunity to have had these three beers. Huge thank you to my friend who shared and to Zack for giving them to her in the first place.

But let’s talk about two things that aren’t so butterflies and roses regarding Fox Farm.

1. Zack, my friend… reformulate your wax if you plan to continue wax-dipping your bottles. I’m not really a fan of waxing anyway, but if you must… Jesus Christ, soften it up a bit. It’s a miracle that those of us who tried to open the two Music Vale beers didn’t slice our fingers to the bone. And keep in mind we were a) sober and b) know what we’re doing when it comes to de-waxing a bottle cap.

It was like breaking through cement. Happy to report that the beer was worth the comically difficult effort. Also, of course this is the sort of thing that will be sorted over the coming months.

[2017 Update: No more cement wax will be used.]

2. Zack, my friend… you grew up in Connecticut. Foxon Park Beverages in East Haven is an iconic Connecticut brand. (Personally, I’m all about Hosmer Mountain, but whatever.) Anyway, Foxon Park has the word Fox in their name and their logo’s font is pretty close to yours.

Foxy font nonetheless

I don’t think it’s a big deal at all and I know the guy who created your mark has never heard of Foxon Park. Just thought I’d mention it though. ‘Cause that’s what I do.

You keep doing what you do though. I love it.

Consider this page my official welcome to the Connecticut beer scene and my application for the Fox Farm Fanclub.